Fan community
Ars Magica enjoys a highly active, worldwide fan community. No one knows exactly how many active Ars Magica players are out there: see Size of the Fan Community, below.
We invite you to participate in the Ars Magica community by contributing to Project: Redcap.
Learning More About Ars Magica
- The Atlas Games website
- The current publisher, Atlas Games, has a lot of free material on their site, including a free PDF of the Fourth Edition rules, free starter adventures, character sheets, and other useful stuff. Check out the resources for Fourth and Fifth Editions.
- Learning to Play
- Guidance for how to get started with Ars Magica
- The Arcane Connection (podcast)
- Some of the segments are useful for newcomers, while others are aimed at experienced players
- Suggested Reading
- Our Suggested Reading page can help you get started learning about Real History and folklore for inspiration about playing in Mythic Europe
Ars Magica on the Internet
Main article: Internet Site Index
Fans have created a great deal of unofficial material on the World Wide Web, from Project: Redcap itself (and its sibling, the Ars Magica Wiki) to pages for individual sagas.
See the Internet Site Index for a general listing of all Ars Magica sites. Pages for individual sagas are also listed in the Regional Tribunals where those sagas are set. We also have a specific category for fan-created material.
If you are contributing to Project:Redcap by adding links to your own Web page(s), it is OK to cross-list them on both the Internet Site Index and the Regional Tribunal pages if you wish.
Discussions
- Official Ars Magica Discussion Forum
- Atlas Games hosts the official discussion forum on its Web site. Players use the discussion forum to discuss rules questions, story and character ideas, features of the Mythic Europe setting and Order of Hermes, and many other topics.
- Ludopathe's Ars Magica French edition Discussion Forum
- Mailing Lists
- There have also been several e-mail lists devoted to the game, the most active and long-lived of which is the venerable Berkeley Ars Magica List.
- ICQ
Online Play
Please list below any play-by-post or play-by-e-mail games open to new players.
- Play-by-post at the Atlas Games Forums
- Not exactly Ars Magica, but using Ars Magica concepts, is the Tempora Heroica MUD
Fanzines
Main article: Fanzines
In addition to the official Products published by Atlas Games, Ars Magica fans publish their own high-quality Fanzines: semi-professional periodicals written by the fans, for the fans. The current English language fanzine is Sub Rosa.
Podcasts
As of April 2013 there is only one regular dedicated Ars Magica podcast. Arcane Connection (podcast) is detailed with a list of episodes and is English language.
Conventions
Main article: Grand Tribunal (convention)
Since 2007, Ars Magica fans have organized their own conventions, either as part of a larger game convention or as separate affairs. In fact, is most years there have been two conventions, one in the U.K. and one in the U.S. Both are typically held in August.
Finding Players
(for tabletop games, as opposed to online)
- Sagalocator
- An online forum for players seeking games, and games seeking players. By June 4, 2015, the link takes you to a page talking about the rules of myfreeforum's rules that ends with a note "Forum suspended, ask why on the support forum."
- Group-finding thread on Atlas Games forums
- There's a sticky thread on the official forum that should help find players.
- Ars Magica Player Finder
- Web page of games seeking players. Last updated 2005.
Size of the Fan Community
There are no hard statistics on the actual number of active Ars Magica players, but John Nephew did post the following on the official forum in response to a fan's question (on 16 March, 2009):
Well, as a privately held corporation, we don't as a matter of general practice share detailed sales or financial information with the public. In terms of supplements, I'm comfortable saying that we have typically printed 1,000 to 1,500 of each Ars Magica 5th Edition supplement on its first printing. Numerous supplements have needed to be reprinted. The core rulebook needs to be printed in larger quantities, both because of higher demand and also to make its 2-color interior printing affordable. Today we are down to the very last case of the second printing, and the third printing is due to arrive from the printer in the middle of this week, avoiding any out-of-stock time between printings. I hope this is enough to satisfy your curiosity. :-)
Idiosyncrasies of the Fan Community
The Ars Magica fan community was historically centered on the Berk List, which has developed its own special jargon and even a geeky notation called the ArM code.
Since the launch of ArM5, the official discussion forum has developed into a distinct, but overlapping, community in its own right. Due to the number of people who participate in both discussion groups, much of the jargon has migrated over to {enrich, corrupt} the newer forum.